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Monday, 6 December 2010

What makes a great villain?

Now what does make a great villain? Wormholes, a Breakthrough, Doomsday being nigh .. ah! - how about an explanation on my blog .. please welcome the author with the mostest: Mr Stephen Tremp ...

... who, in this the first of his trilogy, Breakthrough, entices us with movie hurtling scenes, racy locations, snow storms, physics .. and wormholes (my best!) .. please sit back and enjoy the words of Stephen Tremp as my first guest ever to post here:

Some villains are obvious from the start. In old Westerns, the bad guy wore the black hat, the good guy the white hat. Darth Vader was dressed entirely in black. Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker wore white. However, villains today are not necessarily so cut and dry. They do not even need to be people. Aliens from other planets make great villains. So do animals such as Jaws.

Jaws: Theatrical release poster (Steven Spielberg film)

Villains can take the form of concepts and ideologies such as social injustices, racism, or human trafficking. Villains can be drugs. They can be greed and lust for power, or just plain ignorance of another’s differences and making them scapegoats as in Schindler’s List.

Don’t forget about the setting, which itself can be a really nasty evil villain. I bought the movie "1408" because this is such a story. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend renting it.

1408 Theatrical Release poster of the film – based on a Stephen King short story

Generally, I’ve been taught that the villain is the obstacle that stands in the way of the protagonist. The good guy is introduced first, then the villain enters a few chapters later and rains on the protagonist’s parade or threatens the world or a small sliver of it.

However, sometimes villains are unmasked to the reader from the start. I prefer to begin a story with the bad guy. Example: In the Columbo television series the villain is first introduced to the audience performing his murderous acts. There is no Whodunit as we already know who done it. It’s just a matter of the sleuth performing detective work and solving the crime.

Other times the author waits until the end of the story to reveal the killer. Example: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes or Scooby Doo (I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling kids).

Every episode of the original Scooby-Doo format contains a penultimate scene in which the kids unmask the ghost-of-the-week to reveal a real person in a costume. FromScooby-Doo, Where Are You! season two, episode one ("Nowhere To Hyde", September 12, 1970).

Villains needn’t be malicious or even hold anything against the protagonist. An antagonist must simply impede a story’s action towards the goal: Villain Writing Lessons from Lord Vader. Of course, if they meet and hate each other’s guts, that’s better. Find the balance. Get inside their head. Make them believable, but one who takes risks most would not ordinarily do.

Villains need a reason to act and react the way that they do. His or her actions can introduce the conflict that drives the story forward. It is then up to the antagonist to put an end to the madness and stop the villain, possibly even killing him.

More and more, audiences are demanding villains past are explained. They want to know why they are they way they are. Example: The new Freddy Krueger movie will go into far more detail of how Freddy came to be Freddy because the first movie did not go into much detail other than the mother explaining the story to her daughter.

Freddy Krueger – a ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ character

Humanizing is vital to developing a villain. Each of your characters should think like a human (even if they’re not), and react to events in very human ways, regardless how fantastical or outlandish events become. Character flaws go along with humanization. Both protagonist and antagonist need to have faults. Usually, the good guy overcomes and conquers as I explain in the post The Straight from Hel: Character Arc while the bad guy has damning faults that ultimately lead to his demise. Example: Greed or madness.

Important: Developing a great villain does not necessarily mean he only has to make life dangerous for the good guy. Make life dangerous for him, too. Who are the antagonist’s antagonists besides the good guy? You can really make things difficult for the villain as the story progresses then draws to a close. His world is closing in around him. Detectives, family and friends of victims, investigative reporters, other villains, society, his cronies and others may all want to extract justice in their own way.

“Sometimes, if you’re lucky, a villain will just come to you whole … I love when your subconscious does the work for you … you have a real, heinous person in mind, either a criminal you’ve read about who sparks such an outrage in your soul that you have to create him on paper just to destroy him the way he needs to be destroyed. Sometimes it’s a person you really know – in the novella I recently finished I took great pleasure in detailing all the banal viciousness of a producer I know and then bashing his brainless head in.” From Alexandra Sokoloff's post 'What Makes a Great Villain'.

Please check out Steve's Science for Youth tab, and his Library Blog tab

This blog, more likely its owner, is not sophisticated enough to have Tweets and Facebooks and buttons! .. but we'd love whatever you can do for Stephen!!

Thank you .. it's been great fun having you here .. and now I know a little about developing a villain for a story .. and I so look forward to your next home and away ..

Dear Mr Postman .. as you can see I really do have my first guest posting here .. and I feel so honoured to have this wonderful author .. my mother will look up at me with big eyes and say ... what? .. and how? and why? .. and all the other fun things and then she'll have one big smile for me .. ! But perhaps today .. I should say this is a villainous story?!

Hi Lake Viewer .. good to see you & you have a wonderful location - good choice of place to live!

I write posts of items that will amuse my mother - as per my brief bio on the blog - and keep her brain stimulated ..

This particular post is my first guest one from Stephen Tremp of California - who is in the process of writing a trilogy - the first one "Breakthrough" he self- published and continues to do so .. letting us know how he goes about the process .. please check out his blog: my villain/villein post is there.

Good to see you here and hopefully you'll be back for more! Enjoy today .. Hilary

These are great points to take into consideration when writing a villain!! Thanks so much Stephen Tremp for this insightful and very villanous take on my favourite characterstic to write!! Oh I do love me a bad guy/gal/alien/creature!!!

Hi Steve .. thanks - this has been good for me .. I've been looking at how you all (authors) write your novels, and your characters .. so these descriptions of the various attributes that can be used - open up my eyes even more .. setting the scene, introducing the background of each character etc .. lots of useful information here ..

Some good insights provided in this fine post. One of my favorite aspects of villainy is the one of setting or the forces of nature. The story is often the more heroic tale of a person or people rising above that which seems overcoming to them and in the end surviving and being winners. These are often the more uplifting stories. But well drawn human villains can be a lot of fun.

Hi Steve ... oh yea! I just never dared ask .. how do you fit in to this eclecticism? Well you did .. Jaws, Hannibal Lechter, 1408 - now that sounds ? interesting!, and Scooby Doo .. and you 've given me a thought for the future .. with a slightly different twist .. we'll see!

Your suggestion of the Home and Away for all of us - makes sense .. a good mix across the blogosphere .. thanks - delighted to have you as my first!! Cheers Hilary

Hi Julie .. yes - the Hannibal Lechter photo is very good isn't it .. very threatening .. I never saw the film - because I was too frightened!! Villains do that to me .. fun ones ok .. but dark and particularly nasty ones .. no thank you!! Steve did do a good post here ..

Great post and I will follow through and check out Stephen's work sites - great job here.

I always keep in mind my oldest daughter's first villainous encounter. She was 3 and her friend's birthday was centered around seeing the movie Bambi. The fire kills Bambi's mother - it was so traumatic to my child that she did not go to another movie until she was in the double digits (she loves movies now and animation is her fun art - IT Girl)

I always keep this in mind because when I was doing counseling it assisted me in finding the "pain" and the source of this "pain" a child might be experiencing - even adults The villain in their life...it is always amazing to me how many people imitate movie pain into their real life.I am actually a feel good movie buff - there are so many bumps in the road of life, I can just hear of it now and move on

Hi Jannie .. no -he's not is he! Steve had put a small one in .. I just preferred this rather gruesome picture .. have to have my pictures!

I just don't do villainous movies .. so actually mostly don't know what people are talking about - I've seen enough from the promotional scenes ..

Stephen .. set a lot of his marketing up himself .. and it's all on his blog - he went through his recent process from July this year .. so with Talli .. good mix of learning - let alone all the other authors.

We'll have to do the same for you and your CDs .. and I've enjoyed the guest posting .. and have some thoughts for next year ..

This brings back memories! My younger brother used to love horror films and convinced me to watch a few with him. We watched all ‘Nightmare on Elm Street' sequences. It was SO HARD for me. I would have nightmares for weeks!

I haven't seen a horror film in 20 years at least, and I don't miss the genre!

Hi Vered .. wonderful to see you here .. oh did you actually sit and watch .. and then suffer nightmares .. I think I would have done too. So pleased - I managed to avoid most of the horror stories and films growing up!

Like you .. I don't do horror movies or films .. and I can quite believe your comment .. cheers & enjoy the weekend .. Hilary

Bad guys are great to read and write, but sometimes difficult to watch (Freddy Kruger is a good example). I agree it's important to think of the type of antagonist we're writing and when the antagonist is revealed. Fun different examples.

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About Me

A lover of life – who after London, spent time in South Africa; an administrator, sports lover, who enjoys cooking and entertaining ... who through her mother’s illness found a new passion – writing, in particular blogging; which provides an opportunity for future exploration, by the daughter, who has (in her 3rd age years) found a love of historical education. Curiosity didn’t kill this cat – interaction is the key! Now moved to Vancouver Island, Canada for 'a while' - not forever ...